Advance apologies - a spelling one!

[TheListingAttic]

Okay, I'm being one of those posters, and am thereby effectively basting myself and willingly stepping onto the grill for a flaming.

But: when did this "ect" business start?! Every third post I read these days is "ect" this and "ect" that. It's "etc", people! E-T-C! For "et cetera"! I'm developing a nervous twitch every time I see it, and am actually going to pop before too long.

I'm done. Unleash the pedant-strength flame throwers.

Easy typo. I used to type 'teh' for 'the' all the time if I was in a hurry

I would like to congratulate you for having so few concerns in your life that you find time to concern yourself regarding other people's spelling.

And, of course, being one of those OPs I was inviting one of these posters. Sigh.

And have now added italic/bold inconsistency to my heinous crime of writing a lighthearted post about my trivial grammar niggles. Oh, the humanity!

My own nervous twitch start when people write 'chest of draws' , it's a drawer for crying out loud!

For some reason I keep seeing no one written as noone which irrationally annoys me.

For a bit of fun have a look at this restaurant sign.

TheListingAttic, will you - or someone - please think of the children?

[And while we're at it, can anyone tell me how to produce an en dash on an iPhone?]

I'm developing a nervous twitch every time I see it, and am actually going to pop before too long

I don't think this is an Oxford comma.

I like "&c".

Bold fail.

To boldly go, &c., Maid.

And while we're at it, can anyone tell me how to produce an en dash on an iPhone?

Yes. Press and hold the regular "-" key and you'll get a pop up of appropriate alternatives. Slide along to the long one. This tip applies to adding accented vowels and so on.

Oh my days! Em dashes too. You're my hero, Maid.

#grammarlolz

I see "ect" a lot on Facebook. Also "here, here" instead of "hear, hear" (an understandable mistake, but still irritating!)

I also see a lot of people using commas for ellipses or longer pauses (like this,,,,, instead of like this!.....) which I'm completely baffled by.

What is the appropriate usage of the various dash lengths. I always change Word &c if it tries to correct my dash length.

And a ? fail there.

They're not Oxford commas. I was trying to sidestep that issue to play down the fact I'd mislabelled them - doesn't exactly help my case!

I prefer to think of them as punctuational flourishes!

Agree with all of the above but NOTHING is as bad or comes close to being as wrong as could of/would of/should of. Despite people continually pointing out the error it still proliferates on here and my toes curl under with irritation.

Basically, you don't want to use a hyphen (-) if you mean to write a dash (– [en] or — [em]), as I did above. So if your computer is extending them, it is probably correct (though you are most wise to challenge the authority of the machine).

The publication I work for uses en dashes exclusively, as ems look rather old-fashioned in this country, but certainly American punctuation rules than ens and ems have different usage.

I boycott the em for no reason other than it makes me feel racy.

Disagree silveroldie2, the absolute worst is "alot". But that's been around a while, "ect" seems to have sprung up all of a sudden - and my list of spelling/grammar bugbears now needs an additional sheet!

I boycott the em for no reason other than it makes me feel racy.

Keep it clean, please! We're well shy of the watershed!

My favourite is good manors cost nothing. Closely followed by the "Chester draws" which I can only assume is what all the chavs on my local FB selling page store their shell suits in.

Thanks, editthis.

I am intellectually-challenged in the use of various dashes - nobody ever taught me the difference.

So the first dash is a hyphen (short) and the second dash would be longer (an en or em?).

I also prefer "&c." to "etc" (or indeed "ect").

So do I. It confuses idiots though. I used to work for a twat boss who loudly "corrected" my &c. to ect in front of an office full of spectators.

Then there was the civil servant who thought "dependent" and "dependant" were interchangeable. They are of course adjective and noun respectively. Despite receiving my and others' advice on the point several times he printed and sent out a million forms with his mistake in them in dozens of places. He was then stupid enough to send the resulting complaints to us.

We helpfully told his Minister's private office what was going on and they kicked his arse from Whitechapel to Shepherd's Bush.

Yes, Maid, in essence, although in fact you wouldn't hyphenate "intellectually challenged", as intellectually is an adverb. Sorry, you did ask!

Good manors cost nothing genuinely made me LOL.

Has anyone else noticed that people seem to have started using 'worse' instead of 'worst'? It's been bugging me.

in fact you wouldn't hyphenate "intellectually challenged", as intellectually is an adverb

I have had the same debate with a colleague. The example I gave was somewhat contrived and I wouldn't normally hyphenate an adverb ending in -ly.